Neither Facebook nor Google will ever stop their trade in personal data. If they did, they would go out of business – this is a home truth that people refuse to accept.
This week, Facebook has been under the hammer over disclosures that data fed into its system was treated as so much sweets for the children. That comes as no surprise – CNBC has a wonderful timeline showing how Mark Zuckerberg has responded to similar issues, though not on such a grand scale, over the years.
It will evoke cynical laughs, if nothing else.
Prior to this, Google has said this, that and the other when faced with the reality of YouTube – that it is spewing videos on vile subjects and earning ad revenue through this. There too, the company has said everything possible to avoid criticism, but done little in reality.
{loadposition sam08}Both Facebook and Google are mountains of incredibly well-targeted data which can be used for any task on the face of the earth. Why would these companies take pains to collect all this material if they did not intend to make money off it?
This has been the business model for both companies from day one. Remember: it was the CIA's venture capitalist arm that funded the research of Google co-founder Sergey Brin that led to the creation of this company.
There is an added downside: not only do both Facebook and Google take away revenue from professional media organisations that deal in facts (okay, mostly), they also help spread misinformation at an alarming rate.
And both companies have one thing in common – they rarely, if ever, will interact in person with the media. And certainly not with those organisations which still employ journalists who ask hard questions.
A point to note: Zuckerberg did not do an interview with either The Guardian or The New York Times, the two organisations that have carried the recent Cambridge Analytica stories. No, he went to CNN, Wired and Recode. Why? You can figure that one out, I'm sure.
Few people have thought to ask: why are people so gullible as to trust a commercial company with private data? Everyone wants a free lunch and seriously thinks that they will not pay a price at some point, somewhere.
The true story has finally emerged. But don't expect the lemmings to stop marching over the cliff. Humans have an incredible ability to self-destruct. This is just the first act in a long play.